The Torch Bearer Part 15

"Let me go down to the office every day and help you," she suggested to Ted finally, "I used to help you--before we were married."

But Ted, whose limited ambitions had realized themselves and whose work had now settled into a comfortable routine for which he was more than capable, evinced no enthusiasm for the project. She had helped him; he had never forgotten nor disparaged that. But he did not need or want her at the Star office now, and he did need and want her in his home.

"You have enough to do as it is--with Eric and the house," he said.

"But, Ted, I _haven't_ enough to do," she insisted. "There's nothing for me really to do in the house. I overlook everything, but that doesn't occupy all my time. And with Eric at school--don't you see, my dear, that it's something to do I need? Don't you see how--how restless I am?"

"We ought to have more children!" he exclaimed wistfully.

"Yes," she agreed, "yes, we ought to have more children. But if they do not come--?" And she stared before her, her hands lying empty and listless in her lap. "If they do not come--?" she repeated presently.

And now she turned her brooding eyes to his face and a purpose gathered and concentrated in them. "I wonder if you could understand--" she began.

But he cut into the sentence: "I must hurry back to the office. I take too much time for lunch. Don't get discontented, little girl. I'll take you down to Louisville for the horse show next week. We'll have a bully spree. That's what you need." And he went off whistling blithely, sure that he had solved the problem of Sheila's "moods"--as he always called any symptom of depression in her.

Sheila watched him go, smiling. "Of course he wouldn't have understood," she said to herself. "And how I would have bothered him if I'd tried to a.n.a.lyze myself for him--poor dear!" But the reflection, amused, yet wholly tender, did not end her unrest, her perplexity.

After a futile attempt to interest herself in duties about the house, she set out for a walk, hoping to capture something of the outdoor peace. It was October, always an exhilarating month in Kentucky, with its crisp air and its flaming banners of red and gold, and soon her blood was stirred and her heart lightened, and she was swinging along at a brisk pace. She had started in the direction of her grandmother's house, but suddenly she wheeled about and took to another street.

Never since Eric's illness had her grandmother spoken to her of her writing, and she had been glad of the silence. It seemed to her that if they talked at all, they who had been so close, so much would have to be said; she could not conceive of a reserve in anything which she undertook to discuss with Mrs. Caldwell at all. Ted's views on the duty of a wife and mother would therefore have to be told with the rest, and she did not want to tell them. Her grandmother would have little patience with them, she was sure. As a devoted husband, most of all as the father of Sheila's child, Ted seemed to have won a secure place in Mrs. Caldwell's affection at last, and Sheila, who had clearly seen Mrs. Caldwell's original reluctance to the marriage, had no intention of jeopardizing that place now. Understanding, sympathy, advice would have meant much to her, but she could not take them at Ted's expense.

So she walked on, away from her grandmother's house; onward until she left the town behind her and found herself upon the road leading to Louisville. Just ahead of her, she saw, then, a familiar figure trudging along in leisurely fashion, the figure of Peter Burnett.

"Peter!" she hailed joyously. And as he hastened back to her, her heart lifted buoyantly; her somber mood departed. She did not say to herself, "_Here_ is understanding," but she felt it. A sudden warmth possessed her, and that other self of hers, so long banished--the Other-Sheila of dreams and visions--suddenly looked out of her eyes.

"A const.i.tutional?" inquired Peter. And then, to her nod, "May I go with you?"

"Oh, yes, Peter, do! Let's have a good old-time talk! Let's play I'm young again!"

Peter grimaced: "You? You're still a child! But _I_--! It's a sensitive subject with me nowadays--that of youth."

"It needn't be," laughed Sheila. "You've discovered the fountain of eternal youth."

And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the Peter of twenty-eight. Still slender and of an indolent grace, his aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted. And having pa.s.sed his life far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure with a freshness rare to middle years. He was, it must be admitted, a convincing argument in favor of laziness--except for the expression of his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment. And unfulfilled, in very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his exceptional parts. He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still leading cotillions. He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila, such as this. So his years had pa.s.sed; too smoothly to age him; too barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense. No one appeared to see his pathos, but pathos was there.

He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had for each other. And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's understanding sympathy--for anything that she might choose to tell him.

The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its crest just as the sun grew low and vivid. A glow was upon the autumn fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere; tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to them, a crooning indescribably mournful. And then they espied, crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature as weird and mournful as the sound.

"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.

Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged, unkempt being--yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags and her beggar's life by her insanity. Long ago she had ceased to work at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous effort, however simple. But she had resisted the obvious havens of asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the precarious charity of those who had once employed her. She made her home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to another in a sad progress of dest.i.tution. And whenever the days were fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them.

To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed. For she held something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.

Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware of her presence. She was not aware of anything in the world but the treasure within her arms. Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable. For the thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a lullaby.

Very softly Sheila turned to Peter. "Let us go back," she said. "She hasn't seen us--she mustn't see us. We must not wake her from her dream. It's a doll she's rocking, and she's dreaming--she's dreaming it's a child."

They started back without speaking, hushed and saddened by what they had seen of another's tragedy; and as they went, Sheila was thinking of the occasion in her childhood when she had pretended to be Lisbeth's little daughter. It had happened so long ago, but in all the years since then Lisbeth had been intent on the one dream, the one hope--that of motherhood. All definite remembrance of the child she had borne and lost was gone from her clouded brain, but the instinct and desire of motherhood had remained; it had been life to her. Her mind, flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp from one uncompleted thought to another, had been steadfast enough in that; her heart, detached from every human tie, had never faltered in its impulse of maternity. The tears filled Sheila's eyes again, filled and overflowed so that Peter gave an exclamation of concern and dismay.

"Poor Lisbeth!" she murmured. "Poor thing! And I who have my child am discontented. What is the matter with me?"

It was the question she had put to Ted long ago--after that other episode of Lisbeth--and he had been as bewildered as she. But there was no bewilderment in the glance that met hers now. Nevertheless, Peter did not answer her directly. But after awhile he said musingly:

"A bird's wings may be clipped, but its heart can't be changed.

Always--always--it is mad to fly!"

CHAPTER XII

Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold on life. As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever, taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer.

He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk finally turned.

"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked. "It's rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays. Marriage swallows women terribly, doesn't it?"

"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs.

Caldwell. "I'm fond of Ted--really very fond of him, in fact--but I've always expected marriage to swallow his wife. He's that sort of man."

"You think he demands so much of her then? I'd felt that it was the boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life--her old self."

"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly--through the boy?"

Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand. I understand _her_--to the soul! But there's something in her life I don't understand. I'm sure Ted's good to her. I'm sure they love each other. But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell. The trouble is that she wants to write--and she doesn't. I can't understand why she doesn't. When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd, that she doesn't take up her work again. And I can't tell her so--well as I know the value of the gift she's wasting. She isn't frank with me. I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."

"She isn't frank with me either, Peter. But I'm a little more informed about the situation than you are. Sheila was writing a story when Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to scarlet fever. That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for Sheila's giving up her work."

Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that?

Do you think he blamed her?"

"No--I'm sure he didn't. He was terribly, terribly sorry for her. Ted is capable of generosity at times, Peter--I'm not fond of him for nothing!--and he was generous then. But of course Sheila reproached herself. I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she censured herself. I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever since. It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a mistake, an accident. If she had married another man--it wouldn't have happened."

"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"

"Ah, that might have happened in any case. I meant the atonement."

"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her. How, then, could he be responsible?"

"He could let the atonement go on! He isn't a subtle person, but I believe he's divined that, and let it continue. I knew, before Sheila married him, that he would not care for her art. I knew that he would resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage. And knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't help taking the advantage circ.u.mstances had offered him."

"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"

"Capable of generosity _at times_, Peter. And so he is. Most of us have our generosities and our meannesses. Ted's like the rest of us in both respects. The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila.

If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the atonement wouldn't. For _you_ would have _wanted_ her to write; you would have made her feel it wrong _not_ to write. It's not that you're a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for Sheila. You ought to have married her, my dear. I meant you to marry her!"

Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell. Very rigidly he stood, his hands at his side, tightly closed. When he finally turned again into the room, his face was white.

"Why do you tell me that now--now that it's too late?" he asked. And his voice shook with the question.